well your cha is higher then I would have had it. I would had more con instead as a bad hit can drop you fast. The druid should have a decent cha. Commanding his pet will be a touch hard if not.
Evocation is a decent school to dump. I would dump nercomancy as the other other. Abjuration has some nice defenisve spells prot evil, shield,. While I am not a fan of necro
You can damage plenty with conjuration. Look at the snowball spell that damages and staggers the victim. You can acid arrow and summon pets to do even more damage. These spells generally go through SR too, and while the scorching ray doe snot. So eat that golems.
I would probably use charm person for the face.
If you wanna own iniative get a greensting scorpion for a +4 to it. But a bonded object is great too.
Not sure if you rolled stats or did a point buy. I am guessing rolled.
Teleportation is awesome.
another feat worth looking at Acadamae graduate, it is in the curse of the crimson throne a free download from this site.
Ne w Fea t: ACADAMAE GR ADUATE
You have passed the grueling Test of Summoning and
graduated from the Acadamae.
Prerequisites: Specialist wizard level 1st; cannot have
conjuration as a forbidden school.
Benefit: Whenever you cast a prepared arcane spell
from the conjuration (summoning) school that takes
longer than a standard action to cast, reduce the casting
time by one round (to a minimum casting time of one
standard action). Casting a spell in this way is taxing and
requires a Fortitude save (DC 15 + spell level) to resist
becoming fatigued.
|
While I wouldn't say you're doing it "wrong," I would not select Abjuration as an opposition school. There are too many useful spells in there, including Protection from Evil, Shield, and Resist Energy. One of my players chose Abjuration as an opposition school and he's missing it enough to spend a discovery to get access to it.
Evocation is fine to drop, since Conjuration has damaging spells and the druid can also apply area damage. Like Finlanderboy I would suggest Necromancy as your second opposed school. It has a few nice spells, but you'll probably miss it less than you'd miss Abjuration - or any of the other schools.
Remember that you can cast spells from your opposition schools using a scroll or wand with no problem, and situational spells like Sculpt Corpse are good choices for scrolls anyway.
The druid should have a decent cha. Commanding his pet will be a touch hard if not.
Not really. It's only a DC 10 to have an animal perform a task it knows (12 if the animal is wounded), and the druid gets a +4 to Handle Animal checks with their companion, so it just takes 4 ranks and a 10 Cha to get the +11 that will auto-succeed.
And that's assuming that the GM (1) requires the handle check each round (2) only lets you try the check once per round, despite the fact that handling your AC is a free action that you could theoretically retry at no penalty and (3) enforces the +2 DC on a wounded animal (which I didn't even know about until I double-checked the DC just now).
Plenty of druids dump Cha.
Some interesting spell choices, but nothing that couldn't be made up a bit later on. I'm sure you have flavor reasons for sculpt corpse, perhaps you intend to confuse enemies. In any case, since the others helped a lot with the schools and some feats I'll see if I can make some suggestions for future spells. Mind you, I don't know what your primary environment will be (i.e. urban, forest) so some of these may not fit.
lv.1 [Note: If you get color spray, don't bother with sleep. Color spray in my opinion is just better. Is more useful longer, and doesn't have a full round of casting.)
- Burning Hands (Now. I see you don't have many damaging spells and that's fine. I understand. Burning hands is more of a just in case spell against swarms and if you do want to burn something.)
- Mount (This one depends on environment. If largely outside it could save you money, or just become a meaty shield. If in the city, it may lose some of its usefulness.)
- Feather Fall (I consider this a bonded item spell. That's if you haven't used the bonded item that day yet. When you need feather fall, you need it.
- Unseen Servant (Lots of useful things this can do. I recently had it open the door to an owlbear cage from a safe location, then had a silent image lead it out of the place we wanted to clear.)
- Keep Watch (One of my personal favorite spells actually. Allows you and later other people to stay up all night while getting full rest. Note that even though you don't sleep, you still get to memorize your spells. Only downside is if something happens, but that's what the spell is there to help. It's there to help make sure you aren't surprised during the night.)
- Infernal Healing (You get to heal. Thing is, you detect as evil for a while. So, probably a bad spell if you have a good paladin or good strict lawful party members.)
Lv. 2 - (You have a lot of great spells here already, so this should be short.)
- Invisibility (I see you have vanish, which is great. Normal Invisibility is still better.)
- Levitation (Great for summoning if you're in open spaces. Just levitate up, hover and summon creatures to occupy their attention.)
- Knock (Not as useful if you have a rogue, but it could definitely come in handy if you don't.)
- Stone Call (You already mentioned it. At low levels it clears quite a lot of space. At higher levels it makes terrain harder to get through.)
- Web (Another good battlefield control spell. Granted archers may have a harder time shooting into the enemy that's caught, but if they really must fire at them, burn the web around them and do some damage.)
Hope some of this helps. Remember they're just suggestions.
If you care about doing the optimization thing, like, on any level, then pump that initiative up. As the caster you always want to go 1st because you gotta make sure your team gets buffed before they go into combat, and if they have to stand around waiting for you, then your entire team basically loses a whole turn of combat.
Summoning simply doesn't happen until later levels, your summoning will last less than 5 rounds before level 3, and even then it's still mediocre. What does this mean? For earlier levels focus on getting yourself acclimated with playing a decent wizard. Buff and Battlefield control with your conjuration spells, and even maybe get some blasting in with an acid arrow or something.
Acadamae Graduate is basically a staple lvl 1 feat for a character focused on summoning, so Improved Initiative is good by level 3. Augment Summoning is meh, but Superior Summoning is alright. You could skip both feats and still be okay tbh.
A really good feat to take is Spell Specialization on whatever summoning spell you plan on spamming, chances are it will be at lvl 5, so Spell Specialization (Summon Monster 3) will be fantastic as it will add 2 mroe rounds onto that summon spell. At later levels you are allowed to switch out which spell is your specialized spell, and doing so lets you switch to your higher level summons giving you valuable extra rounds.
Bonded objects are really not that good compared to a familiar. I always say get a compsognathus, or that dodo bird thing because not only do you get its boon (a whopping +4 initiative), but you also get the feat Alertness for free, which gives you a +2 on your Perception check, the most important skill in the game.
Now, this might just be me, but I love the fleet-footed elf type. It's an alternate racial trait from the ARG that gives up Weapon Familiarity (BFD I'm a wizard, I don't care about swords!) and Keen Senses (ouch, the only thing that makes this a choice and not a no-brainer) and gives you the feat Run for free and gives you a racial +2 bonus on initiative, which is the most important modifier on your character sheet.
Lets look at that initiative for a second.
18 DEX
Improved Initiative
thats +8 right there
Familiar with a good bonus to it
Fleet-footed Elf
another +6
I would also say the trait Bully is a complete waste, and either Paragon of Speed, Reactionary, or Warrior of Old is what you really want. It's another +2 initiative.
That puts your initiative at +16, so in other words, you go first, period. And remember, you always want to go first. What good is an area spell if your friends are already in it by the time you can cast it? What good are buff spells if your allies go before you and have to go into combat or waste their own turn? Why not go 1st and make sure that when your allies do make it into combat they all have flanking buddies right from the start and get a +2 to their attacks on top of what buffs you give them (which should be haste, always).
Only other feat I truly recommend above all others is Quicken Spell. Action economy matters, and you need all you can get. Your ideal first turn of every major combat your team gets into will ideally always consist of using s Quickened buff on your team (haste) and then throwing out a summoning spell to give your allies the flanking buddies they need. Now, on the first turn, they are already at +3 to attack, and get a +1 to AC and Reflex saves.
honestly with a dex like that his init shouldn't be aweful, but if you find you're not going before monsters in every combat you could take Improved Init to help with that. i personally would take Magical Knack as a trait hands down, there are plenty of nice feats you can take that would give you a pretty stellar bonus to casting defensively, if it comes up enough. on a side note unless im doing it wrong when you're hit while casting the dc is 10+spell level+damage recieved=dc, which at higher levels can = as much as 40-70 dc to hold the spell if you are hit.
honestly with a dex like that his init shouldn't be aweful, but if you find you're not going before monsters in every combat you could take Improved Init to help with that. i personally would take Magical Knack as a trait hands down, there are plenty of nice feats you can take that would give you a pretty stellar bonus to casting defensively, if it comes up enough. on a side note unless im doing it wrong when you're hit while casting the dc is 10+spell level+damage recieved=dc, which at higher levels can = as much as 40-70 dc to hold the spell if you are hit.
I believe Magical Knack doesn't do anything for a single classed character. It can't boost your caster level higher than your character level.
honestly with a dex like that his init shouldn't be aweful, but if you find you're not going before monsters in every combat you could take Improved Init to help with that. i personally would take Magical Knack as a trait hands down, there are plenty of nice feats you can take that would give you a pretty stellar bonus to casting defensively, if it comes up enough. on a side note unless im doing it wrong when you're hit while casting the dc is 10+spell level+damage recieved=dc, which at higher levels can = as much as 40-70 dc to hold the spell if you are hit.I believe Magical Knack doesn't do anything for a single classed character. It can't boost your caster level higher than your character level.
right... i thought everyone multiclassed... guess its just me xD
my wiz i eventually built into an Arcane Archer and kicked ass, and magical knack was a huge part of that because my caster level stayed on par.
honestly with a dex like that his init shouldn't be aweful, but if you find you're not going before monsters in every combat you could take Improved Init to help with that. i personally would take Magical Knack as a trait hands down, there are plenty of nice feats you can take that would give you a pretty stellar bonus to casting defensively, if it comes up enough. on a side note unless im doing it wrong when you're hit while casting the dc is 10+spell level+damage recieved=dc, which at higher levels can = as much as 40-70 dc to hold the spell if you are hit.I believe Magical Knack doesn't do anything for a single classed character. It can't boost your caster level higher than your character level.right... i thought everyone multiclassed... guess its just me xD
my wiz i eventually built into an Arcane Archer and kicked ass, and magical knack was a huge part of that because my caster level stayed on par.
Multiclassing on full caster builds is usually frowned upon imo. Very rarely do I see it to actually be to a characters mechanical benefit to multiclass. Random level dips set you behind a lot more than you think when it comes to developing class features for what you really want to do, way I see it, if your character doesn't have the concept pretty much done by lvl 11, then you are doing something wrong. Too many times I shake my head at builds on these boards that rely on getting a particular class feature that they can't get until level 17 or something, and at that point you've already played the character for 16 levels without being able to use the concept that you've built for it.
Point is, multiclassing is typically bad, especially in PF. In 3.5 and definitely in earlier editions where you class abilities weren't spread out so there were no dead levels it was a lot easier to justify, but with the current system I don't even bother looking at it. There aren't even that many prestige classes that I find appealing in PF.
I think everything Master marshellow says is situational. Spellcasters biggest things are higher level spells, but if you can improve the lower level spell beyond what the next ones are by dipping then by all means dip away. Most casters do nto get much advancement from level so dipping is great if it helps what you want to do.
I think he had seen poor examples of this in 3.5 and feels the game is too similar to be different. If dipping was so weak, why did the developers add addition incentives not to like the keystones and the favored class. I think this is just silly advice that has not seen or compared enough to be valid.
Although I do agree the presitge classes are weaker in PF
I think I am going to stick with these opposition schools (Necromancy has our only options against undead), and maybe with these stats (I learned the Druid has in fact +2 CHA, but no social skills). A minor change could be 11 to CON, in order to raise it at at 4th level and have a +1 - that is if he's still alive...
You stated about your abilities:
Abilities (including racial modifiers):
STR 10
DEX 18
CON 10
INT 20
WIS 11
CHA 14
If you are an Elf and your racial modifiers are already added in then I assume you started with a 12 on Con. If you move the 11 from Wis to Con you would end up with a 9 Con and 12 Wis, which I'm pretty sure you don't want. Rather you could switch Con to Cha and you would end up with 12 on both.
Did you put your favored class bonus into skills? How do you do HP? Do you... <shudder>... roll every level?
Otherwise, great spells already. Summoning will be good for meat shields and giving the rogue a flank partner, especially since you are missing a melee character. Probably the Druid's AC helps here as well?
Extra Initiative is definitely good, but I don't know if I would take it to ridiculous extremes.
I think I am going to stick with these opposition schools (Necromancy has our only options against undead), and maybe with these stats (I learned the Druid has in fact +2 CHA, but no social skills). A minor change could be 11 to CON, in order to raise it at at 4th level and have a +1 - that is if he's still alive...You stated about your abilities:
Abilities (including racial modifiers):
STR 10
DEX 18
CON 10
INT 20
WIS 11
CHA 14If you are an Elf and your racial modifiers are already added in then I assume you started with a 12 on Con. If you move the 11 from Wis to Con you would end up with a 9 Con and 12 Wis, which I'm pretty sure you don't want. Rather you could switch Con to Cha and you would end up with 12 on both.
Did you put your favored class bonus into skills? How do you do HP? Do you... <shudder>... roll every level?
Otherwise, great spells already. Summoning will be good for meat shields and giving the rogue a flank partner, especially since you are missing a melee character. Probably the Druid's AC helps here as well?
Extra Initiative is definitely good, but I don't know if I would take it to ridiculous extremes.
I want ALL of the initiative. I want to go first on a natural friggin 2. There are certain things my party needs to depend on me for, being faster than they are so they don't have to wait for me to buff them or throw an area spell out is one of them. As the caster, it's your job.
@master_marshmallow: Certainly, you do want to go first. I just wouldn't spend quite as many resources on it. Just a (minor) difference of opinion.
@Soul Devourer: Of course it is your character and you have to do what is fun for you. Lots of people have suggested bumping Con, but I can totally see sticking with it and using your higher mental stats.
I personally hate rolling HPs, but if I was in a group that did I would definitely play a low hit die class. The difference between a 1 and a 6 isn't as crippling as rolling a 1 on a d12.